fear of flying
by one hundred sleepless nights
Summary: You need to get lost before you get found. —Massie/Derrick; for Mo.


for the spring fanfic exchange

**dedication: **to mo  
**prompts: **an old beach house, old coca cola bottles, memories, "his fingers were playing with her hair and she held her breath wanting to keep this moment as long as she could."

**fear of flying**

She looks like insanity and Derrick's heart does a terrible thing that feels like squeezing.

It's barely morning and the sun still droops low, sleeping. She's stumbling in skyscraper heels and obscenely expensive, less-than-there clothing. Her legs are bared as she falters towards the door; bloodshot kohl-lined eyes are wild and unfocused and caged. Massie drags her fingers through her tangled hair, from chestnut roots to chestnut ends, her ragged fingernails scrape, scrape, scraping at her scalp. There's a curious wetness at the bottom of her breathing and a need to scream clawing at the back of her throat. She's doesn't get that feeling; it's just there, always just there, and she doesn't understand why it won't vanish.

Massie doesn't understand a lot of things as of late.

"I want to go, I need to go—anywhere but here; anywhere, anywhere, _anywhere_," her voice is shaky and frantic and more to herself than anything and Derrick nearly wants to laugh at how fucked up everything is.

He figures it'd be safer if he didn't.

Massie teeters to the window and presses her hand against it, fingers splayed out, palm flat. From this high up, she can see everything and nothing; it's overwhelming. It is mad, mad, madness up in her head, and all she wants to do is something exciting, different, and get in trouble and drive fast, straight out of Westchester, never looking back.

She wants to do something _real_.

Massie hates this town.

This town, all shiny and plastic and flawless, it's sickening, and oh _god_, she hatehate_hates_ this town.

But it's so hard, so goddamn hard, to leave. Because Massie Block is a masochist with a penchant for playing with fire, and maybe some part of her likes it, the envious glares, the catty rumors, the alcohol and the partying.

It's over now, though. The flashy façades fade into something dark and dangerous, and something lurks in the shadows of her head. It's terrifying and Massie doesn't know how to make it stop.

Instead, she runs.

So when Derrick peers up at her through tangled caramel forelocks and says quietly, carelessly, "We could do it, you know. There's still gas in the car", she turns to him with a wicked smirk and nods.

.

.

.

They leave Westchester ten minutes later, blazing down the interstate in a ridiculously expensive car. Massie smiles at him sharply, all teeth and claws and wildcat. There's a cigarette dangling from one hand and alcohol disguised in old coke bottles balanced precariously in the other.

Derrick's fingers twitch on the steering wheel, a habit engraved deep in his mind, because he was always waiting for something. He guns the engine violently and the rush of adrenaline, the giddiness—it feels _right_ for once.

Massie's eyes are wide and thrilled, caught in a net of exhaustion. She's stunning, like fire against ice crystals against glass flowers.

It may be for this reason that he lets her drag him into a shitty abandoned beach house somewhere in the middle of a nameless city. It's illegal, breaking and entering, he knows and he thinks that maybe, he should've protested, stopped this, but she's sweet like venom and toxic and tantalizing and Derrick's not sure if he has a choice anymore.

.

.

.

It's been a week and Derrick begins to wonder if she really needs him, wants him, even, because she'll never need him the way he needs her. They pull over at random and she leaves him all over again. It's been a different club, different guy, different girl each night and he hates the derogatory terms being thrown at her by strangers behind closed lips and shielding hands.

So far gone is the girl who oozed something spectacular. The only trace left over are discarded memories, recklessly ran through a paper shredder then pasted together again. All that remains are artistic shots of a girl with unbelievable eyes pressed in photo albums stained with tears and coffee spills; littered with excessive emotions and hours of pointless chatter.

He can't help but to picture the radiance she once was, swept away by the rush of society; the survival of the fittest.

It all used to be so simple, he thinks and doesn't. It's an effort to remember, when all Derrick wants is to forget. Contradicting desires fly at each other in a furious frenzy, a manic battle, resulting in migraines and gunshots and a throbbingthrobbing_throbbing_ all over.

Leaving Westchester was useless, worthless. It has backfired, acting as a catalyst, almost. Massie is deteriorating faster than ever and the only way Derrick can lull himself to sleep these days is with false mantras, assurances, lies; _she's still alive this is only a phase ignore it the aching in your heart it'll be alright everything will be okay._

He doesn't know if it's true, doubts it, but he can only cross his fingers and cross his heart and hope to die.

Because she's the type of lost that can't be fixed by pills or therapy or kisses.

And it _kills_ him.

.

.

.

Derrick is constantly watching her through hooded slit eyes, this magnificent shitshow, this stranger-not-stranger-yet-stranger.

She dances like she's invincible or invisible or both, under flashing strobe lights, hips swaying, head thrown back, her face cracked open by a sneer. Massie struts across the floor, middle finger erect, screaming _screwtheworld_, because it's easier than feeling something. She's a lithe, fairy-like form with a razorblade smile that can cut and kill; it's so perfect, it hurts.

She had always been good at that, being perfect.

And Derrick knows, _knows_, she's just bad decisions in heels three inches too high with a trail of sultry perfume, and maybe, possibly, she's not worth it.

He can't stop trying.

Because she is a beautiful disaster; all broken condoms and dirty dancing and tattered swears, the stench of alcohol and tobacco meshed up in one. Because she's sixteen and a mess in a dress, all done up in crimson; red for courage, red for love. Massie's sprinkled with glitter and fuck-ups, and there's something about the steeliness in her eyes that _screams_ defeat and vulnerability and _save me, save me, save me._

There's something else too though, Derrick discovers. It's miniscule, nonexistent almost—a tiny flicker of movement that speaks of wishes and waterfall dreams and once upon a times.

And it's enough, because the stars are out tonight and they dance across the sky in commas and periods and exclamations marks; punctuation for a conversation too far away to reach.

The stars are out tonight, and he (_she_) can see them.

.

.

.

They're alone for once, and it is quiet.

There are purpleblueblack half-moon bruises dusted under her eyes from fatigue, but there's a restless drumming, electric, in her veins. His fingers play with her hair and she holds her breath, wanting to keep this moment as long as she could, as if it could change in mere blinks, only to be found in forgotten scrapbooks years later. So she ignores the urge inside of her to just _go_, ignores it and the monsters, the demons, the ghosts, salivating inside her head.

They hover six feet under the sequinned sky, a grave length over heaven, waiting to be rescued, and the way he looks at her with his deep brown holes for eyes tugs on her heartstrings. It is as if she is delicate, fragile, breakable.

But Massie is already broken; she can't be crushed any further. She is a cut-copy-paste image of her past self that somebody forgot to save; fragmented and shattered into jagged crumbles of heart and soul and sanity and just not right, the pieces not really ever fitting perfectly together again, never really all there.

The black, black, black inside her finally stops hissing as he sneaks his pinky to link snugly with hers and she drops rubber eyelids over pools of liquid gold, molten and white-hot.

It's the first time she sleeps in weeks.

.

.

.

They're in the car again, driving, moving; _running, running, running._

Always running.

Because maybe that's all she needs, all she ever needed; to feel the sweeping of the wind in her hair, like the whisper of fingertips brushing out gnarls on a balmy summer day. To return the caress of the crisp sun-setting night air, vaporizing the rosebud tears that threaten to storm before they can fully blossom, as it presses against her cheeks like mismatched promises.

And exhilaration, so thick, it's almost tangible; all friction and sparkling like static and barefooted freedom and pirouetting in open air.

So for now, Massie waits with her head in the rose petal clouds, just stays there for once; running, but not. With only the two of them, where catching joy and bottling pain is possible, and time stops and she's not afraid of what she'll miss.

Derrick stares at her out of the corner of his eyes, sees her stretch her skin-pulled-over-bone arms upwards as if she's reaching for the frozen fireworks glistening up ahead. He taps his fingers anxiously, for the last time, because finally, there's something _worth_ waiting for.

Massie's not happy. She hasn't been happy for a long time, too long. But as they pass dusty road signs and miles of empty field, she tips her head back, eyes fluttering shut, mouth opened like silk, and laughs like silver bubbles rising up to hang in the space between the stars and the moon.

And Massie thinks she might be on her way to becoming happy.

.

.

.

_fin._

* * *

GUYS A ROCKET TO THE MOON MAKES ME SO EMOTIONAL AND 12738491357819% DONE WITH EVERYTHING. i just.

i just…fuck. they're just so fucking amazing and make me want to flail and they're breaking up and i'm sobbing from feely feels and them. and this fic was inspired by a rocket to the moon so this isn't completely irrelevant.

reviews make me hungry.

*FLAILS AND RUNS AWAY* KTHXBAI


End file.
